GENISYS Blog

The Future of Lighting has Arrived [Part 3]

Wendell D. Strong, GENISYS PoE Lighting Manager

Sometimes it makes sense to go “Back to the Future”, so to speak, in order to have a better perspective. In this case, to 1998 in Tucson, Arizona.

A gathering is occurring of “stakeholders” in the lighting world. About 60 people are about to participate in a brainstorming session. It is the second meeting launching “Vision 2020 – The Lighting Technology Roadmap” being hosted by the DoE. Yours truly is in the room as a participant.

It was one of the most fascinating lighting events I have ever been a part of. As we were identifying the multiple disconnects that were preventing lighting technology from being more quickly adopted, a woman in the back of the room asked a question that still resonates with me to this day.

“Why do we insist on selling lighting as if it were an ice cream cone and base its value on how many calories it contains”?

The room remained quiet in a moment of reflection and self condemnation it seemed.

How did lighting get reduced to being a base commodity being treated both then and now primarily as a cost per square foot proposition?

Why do I raise this point?  In  my previous articles, I have pointed out some of these disconnects. Now I will focus on the main one.

Even though PoE Lighting technology is easily capable of saving 90% in energy, and reduces installation time and ongoing maintenance costs while creating a level of intelligence and ease of control which results in greater energy savings across time, we are still missing the point.

While interior lighting has been relied on by humans for comfortable and appealing settings in many venues from hospitality, education, healthcare, retail, office and environments of all types, we seem to have forgotten what its most primary contributions are.

Basic Functions of Lighting

The two most basic functions of lighting date back to prehistoric times and the discovery of fire which provided both safety and productivity to early humans. PoE Lighting technology can help us take those basic functions to whole new level.

In a commercial building, which is more: the utility costs including lighting or the employees working under the lighting? A pretty simply question, but one we should consider further.

Employees typically account for 90% of a company’s operating costs. Typically, operating costs breakdown as 1% for utilities, 9% for rent, and 90% for salaries and benefits.

We have known for decades that poor lighting has negative impacts on safety, performance and productivity. Additionally, numerous studies show when workers are asked what they would change about their personal work-space, over 50% wish to improve their lighting first and foremost. Up to now, the design standard in office lighting might be best described as only adequate.

What if we could harness the power of the PoE lighting control system, which is paying for itself on the energy consumption side of the business, and apply it to production side and take merely adequate lighting to personally optimized lighting?

Personally Optimized Lighting

What if a menu of positive lighting attributes were available to employees who then could pick and choose from them in order to customize their work-space on demand to their suiting?

Or, in healthcare, patients could control the lighting in their room / over their bed and doctors / nurses could override for treatments?

With the basic capability of changing both the color and intensity of the light, the employee is empowered to “dial in” their lighting to changing tasks as well as their personal preference to the ambiance of the work-space.

For example, I am writing this article under warm color lighting (3000k) at low intensity (35%) as that is the combination which works best for me while being creative. My overall preferred color for detailed work is 5000K, however I normally run Daylight Rhythm (auto sunrise to sunset color and intensity control) as my default setting.  Any changes are made from my smart phone, in seconds. That simple and that easy.

I referenced Vision 2020 at the beginning of this article, and I want to leave you the final Vision Statement itself as we are a mere 2.5 years away from that date:

“In 2020, lighting systems in buildings and other applications will:

• Enhance the performance and well-being of people
• Adapt easily to the changing needs of any user
• Use all sources of light efficiently and effectively
• Function as true systems, fully integrated with other systems rather than as collections of independent components
• Create minimal impacts on the environment during their manufacturing, installation, maintenance, operations, and disposal

As a result, people will understand, value, and utilize the tangible, personal benefits provided by these lighting systems.”

It would appear that PoE Lighting technology is well positioned to be the driver toward the embodiment of Vision 2020. Sometimes history is the best predictor of the future, especially when it planned to be.  Expect more from your lighting system. Much more.

 

Check out Part one & part two of this three part series.

 

Wendell D. Strong, GENISYS PoE Lighting Manager, Innovative Lighting

A New Dawn of Lighting Technology [Part 2] 

In the first installment of this 3 part series, we walked through a brief review of commercial lighting history starting with open flame sources which carried the lighting banner until just over 100 years ago.

We ended with why SSL, or Solid State Lighting. This was the first true technology that was capable of creating a new dawn of lighting. This is because it had a natural ‘want to be controlled’ as a solid state DC low voltage light source.

My father used to say it didn’t matter how efficient your car was if you left it running in the driveway— and so it is with lighting. Originally, our quest was solely lumens per watt, which was great, but we tended to not apply much control as we were already gaining more efficiency.  When controls were applied, they were costly, cumbersome, and often confusing to the end user. As a result, they didn’t always perform as desired. We seemingly “lost control” while trying to gain it.

This was the result of approaching control as “add on feature” as opposed to control being innately part of the lighting system technology to begin with. This is why truly intelligent lighting control has never really existed before.

There is a very simple truth at the heart of this. We are treating LED technology the same as every other lighting technology to date when it is very different. And missing that difference is missing everything it can become.

The LEDs themselves don’t want or need A/C power. Power-over-Ethernet provides the DC low voltage power that the LEDs crave. All delivered via a simple everyday Ethernet cable which provides not only their power, but control as well through that very same cable. One wire both powers and controls the lighting. This is a game changer in every sense of the phrase.

This means we no longer require the traditional electrical infrastructure or even the lighting circuits altogether. They prevent intelligent control, and are quite frankly obsolete in a networked lighting world.

PoE Lighting Technology is fully networked lighting at a DNA level. Not only is every energy lighting control function built in with a 1% incremental granularity, everything is individually addressable. This is where the statements of “up to 90% energy savings compared to traditional lighting” come from when multiple control strategies can be brought to bear on a single luminaire easily and simply.

The power of networking via Power-over-Ethernet and the very nature of Solid State Lighting (LED) combined, produce a sum far greater than its individual parts. Needless to say, this is a quantum leap from where we are today and that is looking at this PoE Lighting technology from only a lighting control perspective.

The final installment of this series will outline what this all means as we translate what we are capable of doing today beyond sustainability, energy efficiency, and savings. We will explore what fully networked lighting is capable of delivering to everyone affected by the PoE lighting system.  Meanwhile, start imagining what you wish a lighting system could do!

Missed part 1 of the series? Read it here.